For as many interesting and nicely thematic events there are as many or more patently absurd things that occur. Even with the constant tonal shifts to try and paint over the stupid stuff, the constant shifts also detract from the cool things. Ultimately it becomes a pretty middling experience for me.

Really important book for Canadians. I am so sick of talking to Canadians exactly as described in this book: under the impression that racism isn’t really a problem here nor is white supremacy and it’s roots in our military and governmental apparatus. We have yet to even acknowledge our colonial roots and damage done to Indigenous people. But have no problem taking more high ground over America.

Canadians continue to further a racist narrative around racialized people with exact same playbook as America and this book lays that out in an accessible way.

I’m not sure what I expected, considering I’ve seen the Disney film, but I didn’t realize this would be more wild than even the movie! I found it charming and endearing and was interested to find out how much it differed from my favourite childhood film.

It contains things I typically dislike a lot, such as breaking the 4th wall, fiction that is self aware and comedic—but because it’s a children’s/YA story, it worked for me. It establishes the tone early on to give the reader a heads up and the humour is clearly to engage a younger audience and satirize cultural elements to make them more critical of society.

It’s pretty batshit sometimes, and has some casual sexism I could do without, but I came away pleasantly surprised.

Fleishman can fuck right off. I did not like the character; it was so insufferably annoying to be in his mind that the premise was beside the point. Could not see myself struggling through this.

I believe it’s supposed to be funny, but it’s not (to me). But, as I’ve mentioned before, most of the time comedy doesn’t hit for me, so if you like comedy, who knows, maybe you’ll dig it more than I did. DNF 10% ish.

Ironically, the new tv show adaptation, though it may not be as purely intellectual, exposes a few of the problems with the book.

The update is actually preferable over the book in terms of enjoyment factor and having a better overall narrative. Obviously it’s not as heady as this, but I find the book trying often because it’s more concerned with spoon feeding you fallacies. The text really does feel archaic in light of modernity, though undeniably still has something to offer.